On A Wedding Anniversary -- Dylan Thomas

Guest poem submitted by Aseem Kaul:

(Poem #1067) On A Wedding Anniversary The sky is torn across This ragged anniversary of two Who moved for three years in tune Down the long walks of their vows. Now their love lies a loss And Love and his patients roar on a chain; From every tune or crater Carrying cloud, Death strikes their house. Too late in the wrong rain They come together whom their love parted: The windows pour into their heart And the doors burn in their brain. -- Dylan Thomas

Easily one of my favourite Dylan poems. I love the way the sense of distance
and separation in the first stanza dissolves into aching passion; how a
quiet walk on a cloudy day becomes an experience of love that is
simulataneously revelation and loss. And I love the way that Thomas, as
always, finds the exact phrases for that experience - of all the places in
poetry that relationships have floundered, there are few more simple and
more moving than "too late in the wrong rain" - and finds also the exact
balance between those phrases, so that a poem filled with raging lines
("Love and his patients roar on a chain", "Doors burn in their brain") still
manages to convey an overall impression of quiet tragedy.

Aseem.

[Minstrels Links]

Dylan Thomas:
Poem #14, Prologue
Poem #38, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
Poem #58, The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower
Poem #138, Fern Hill
Poem #225, Poem In October
Poem #270, Under Milk Wood
Poem #335, After the Funeral (In memory of Ann Jones)
Poem #405, Altarwise by Owl-Light (Stanzas I - IV)
Poem #476, In my craft or sullen art
Poem #568, Especially when the October Wind
Poem #1035, The Hand that Signed the Paper
Poem #1067, On A Wedding Anniversary